In general, comprehensive financial planning typically includes, for example, financial statement preparation and analysis (including cash flow analysis/planning and budgeting), investment planning (including portfolio design, i.e. asset allocation and portfolio management), income tax planning, education planning, risk management, retirement planning and estate planning. Many of the principles and rules of financial planning have been codified in industry standards, such as, for example, those standards set by the Certified Financial Planner Board Of Standards (found at www.cfp-board.org), which are incorporated herein by reference. For example, such standards describe the process a consumer should reasonably expect a certified financial planner practitioner to use in establishing and implementing a financial planning engagement.
Until recently, the principles of financial planning, personal finance, investing, accounting and the accumulation or loss of wealth were not sufficiently taught in the curricula of most educational institutions. Even today, only a select few schools teach these subject matter areas. Moreover, the few schools that may teach financial planning, typically concentrate the courses in the general finance subject area and often limit the teaching methods to traditional classroom instruction routines. In a few cases, some creative teaching methods exist in the basic principles of personal finance, such as, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,826,878 to Kiyosaki et al. and U.S. Pat. No. 6,106,300 to Kiyosaki et al., both of which are hereby incorporated by reference as background information.
Prior to the present invention, the financial planning field failed to provide a financial planning competition which allows team members to promote camaraderie and develop social skills, all while pursuing the same objective of providing quality financial planning advice. With the increase of financial planning and students interested in learning more about financial planning, a need exists for a fun, interesting and creative system and method for promoting financial planning and educating students about financial planning.